Succession creator Jesse Armstrong says he struggles with impostor syndrome | Jesse Armstrong
Award-winning screenwriter Jesse Armstrong has said that when a writers’ room works well it can feel like “walking on the moon” – but admitted he has suffered from imposter syndrome throughout his career.
Armstrong was behind HBO’s hit series Succession, which stars Brian Cox as family patriarch Logan Roy, who begins a power struggle between the global media mogul and his four children.
He is also an Oscar nominee for writing The Thick of It spin-off In The Loop with Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche, and won a TV Baftas award for his work on Peep Show.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Armstrong, 55, said: “If the writers’ room is working well, it’s like walking on the moon.
“You’re suddenly free from something that might have taken you a week to figure out on your own at your desk.
“Suddenly you start walking around and picking up rocks and everything feels veined with gold and it’s like you can have golden moments of ideas coming from everyone and you’re all on the same wavelength and it can feel pretty magical.”
He added: “You can spend really good days and hours just writing and working, but when that doesn’t work and you feel like you can’t achieve the best version of what you’re trying to do, I find it very, very difficult.
“The theoretically comforting idea of ’oh, it’s going to be okay because you’ve done this before’ actually becomes another stick on your back.
“For me, you don’t know how possible it is to be a really bad writer because you don’t see that all these drafts are really bad.”
Succession, which won 19 Emmys, including outstanding drama series and nine Golden Globes, concludes with its fourth series in 2023.
Despite the many accolades, the author said he still suffers from imposter syndrome.
He said: “Every good writer I have ever met suffers from self-doubt and a lack of certainty about whether what they have just done is good or not.
“I think you go in with a 70% feeling: ‘Oh, this is going to be a disaster and I’m going to turn out to be the fraud I thought I was all along.’
“You need 10 to 20%, 30% if you’re lucky, a feeling of: ‘It would be really cool if I could make the version of this that I think should happen.’
“I think maybe some confidence grows within you that you know this is what it feels like.
“Also, knowing that negative feelings are not necessarily true.”
The full Desert Island Discs interview can be heard on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from 10am on Sunday.
